pdm

bwakile

Buggerlugs

To save us from this growing liability, Cullen is loading members of the Defence Force on to trains with heavy machine guns and orders to shoot any cows seen near waterways. Aggrieved farmers will be promised reparations in the Budget (which will be subsequently cancelled), while the paper profit made from running trains 24/7 will offset Toll’s profit from the buyback. And if cows ever mount a coup anywhere in the world that has a rail network, our Defence Force will be the perfect peacekeepers.

Johnboy

Huh Kyoto, toy trains, mere petty cash to Micky (The Gambler) Cullen, AKA “Drunken Sailor”. The real action is with the Cullen fund stake money currently $4,000,000,000 down according to Treasury estimates. Still easy come easy go, the rich pricks should be good to tap for a few more billion. Is that why that singing sensation the “Four Fugleys” chose Kennys music I wonder for the Liarbore conference theme song?

JSF2008

pdm

Johnboy:

Don’t panic about the Cullen Fund dropping a few %. That figure was probably as at 31 March and there has been good growth through April. As the fund is not going to be drawn on for 25 years or so there is plenty of time for recovery as long as the investment allocations and strategy are correct.

The biggest risk to the Cullen Fund is the trend which is starting towards so called `Ethical Investments’. Give me investments in profitable companies anytime – I don’t want the fund to follow fads and I want the bulk of funds offshore which is where the growth will come from.

stuarts-burgers

Pdm I agree with you last paragraph, once Mickey C, the Greens and other pollys start making investment direction decision’s the fund is at risk. Mickey C is a few million short for his new Hornby Set just get it from the nice folks at the Cullen Fund, Jeanette wants to build a Green Bio Mass Power Plant in Thames but can not interest investors just get the cash from the Cullen Fund.

This is one reason I like Kiwisaver the pollys are not making the investment decisions I am making my choice the investment professional I think will do best for me.

Brian Smaller

mickysavage

I have an idea. Let’s just default on Kyoto and do nothing at all about climate change! The planet may end up being screwed but we can have a few good years until we have to face the consequences. Why live up to international obligations or treaties. It is cheaper not to and we will save some money in the short term.

By the way, wasn’t it Simon Upton and National that negotiated New Zealand’s acceptance of Kyoto?

Redbaiter

Pascal

mickysavage: I have an idea. Let’s just default on Kyoto and do nothing at all about climate change! The planet may end up being screwed but we can have a few good years until we have to face the consequences.

Yes. Because our 0.4% of 0.1% will so massively effect the worlds’ weather that we should push ourselves further towards third world status. Or was it 0.1% of 0.4%? Either way. It’s a number so small that a single fart would undo the billion dollar spend up.

What is happening is our government is buying hot air. If they had done something sensible, great. But this?

Look at it this way. If we had not signed Kyoto and committed to paying polluting nations for trying to affect our 0.000001% of the global weather, we would have had this billion dollars available to spend on actually doing something worthwhile.

Instead. We’re going to end up paying some of the worst polluters because we’re not green enough.

pdm

I have a medal for Helen: I’ve just struck it. The everyman’s award for Contribution Underwhelming the Nation’s Trust. It does require special delivery methodology, though. Fast expanding gas would propel this medal along an elongated cylindrical ceremonial instrument.
I guess it would be awarded semi posthumously. And from a distance.

Pascal

Clunking Fist, no man. Just no. Whilst Labour is doing their best to transform us into a one party state we are still a democracy and will have a chance to change the government in this year. Even joking about assassination is just … sick.

Pascal

infused: Funny seeing The Standard Party staying away from this one.

They stay away from everything that Labour does wrong. But hey, maybe we’ll get a post today about how John Key should have smiled when Helen Clark said something. Or another equally inane post on John Key’s hairstyle. Or whatever they’re trying to use to destroy his image today.

bruceh

Bevan quoting mickysavage: ‘By the way, wasn’t it Simon Upton and National that negotiated New Zealand’s acceptance of Kyoto?’ “Unlike Labour, we on the right don’t mind admitting our mistakes and correcting our positions…”

So Bevan, you think I can be confident that an incoming National led govt will not only drop Kyoto but also take another Upton/National creation, the RMA, by the scruff, turn it on its head and shake out its flawed assumptions and put back together something way better? Like something that recognises the primacy of property rights under law and something that sets up much better incentives for desired environmental outcomes? I doubt this National lot have any appetite for taking on the protected vested interests of state and local govt bureacracies.

Alces

Govts supporting this ideological scam will be history.

From Bolta…..

“Fran O’Sullivan says New Zealand might regret signing up to a carbon trading scheme like the one Kevin Rudd wants for Australia:

But my pick is that (Finance Minister Michael) Cullen will be concerned at the raft of reports by respected forecasters like Infometrics and the Institute of Economic Research that say the emissions trading scheme will have a major economic impact: 22,000 jobs gone by 2012, wages down by $2.30 an hour by 2025 and a cost to households of $600 a year by 2012, rising to some $3000-$5000 a year by 2025, depending on the international carbon price.

Then there’s the price of the carbon credits New Zealand must buy to offset its failure to meet its Kyoto targets for cutting emissions:

Greenhouse Policy Coalition executive director Catherine Beard said Treasury had revalued New Zealand’s Kyoto Protocol deficit to be worth more than $1b on a price of $22 per tonne of carbon—a 165 percent increase in the price of carbon over three years.

And all to “stop” a warming that seems to have stopped already – in 1998.”

policyparrot

“Treasury has done their monthly update of our Kyoto liability and the huge cheque Pete Hodgson promised has now tipped over the $1 billion liability mark for the first time.”

Therefore, DPF, since National wont scrap Kyoto, or said it will delay implementation of any sectors not already signalled by Labour, the question is, not how big the liability is, or whether it exists, since Maurice Williamson and Lockwood Smith are obliged to think so…

But how we in fact lower carbon emissions so that our liability shrinks. Anything other opinion about the validity of such expressed simply adds to the problem, with all the hot air generated further contributing to anthropogenic global warming. While the science of climate change may be indeed be a theory, so in fact the theroy of supply and demand, and we’re not disputing the validity of that, now are we?

Bevan

So Bevan, you think I can be confident that an incoming National led govt will not only drop Kyoto but also take another Upton/National creation, the RMA, by the scruff, turn it on its head and shake out its flawed assumptions and put back together something way better? Like something that recognises the primacy of property rights under law and something that sets up much better incentives for desired environmental outcomes? I doubt this National lot have any appetite for taking on the protected vested interests of state and local govt bureacracies.

Shit dude, didnt mean to make you upset by making your socialist buddy look bad……

Heres a question for you: Who would do a better job rectifying the RMA, National or Labour?